Turning DKE Philanthropy Lessons Into Real-Life Career Goals, Ben Sheppard “Shep” Willis ’95 Helps South African Youth Improve Their Education
In the early nineties, Shep Willis ’95 had a tough decision to make. It was the night before bid day his freshman year at the University of North Carolina, and he was up in the air about where to pledge. Should it be Phi Delt or DKE? Trying to decide, he visited the DKE house that night…
“A couple of the guys told me to follow them, said there was somebody I should meet. Both my dad and grandfather (Ben Willis Jr. ’63 and Ben Willis ’36) had been Dekes, so I had heard stories about Eddie Caldwell, but I had never met him. In the barroom of the DKE house, I met Mr. Caldwell for the first time,” explains Shep. “He shook my hand and told me how my grandfather had been one of the guys who had hired him. He went on to relate some of the proud and not-so-proud exploits of my relatives who had been Dekes before me. At the end of the conversation, Mr. Caldwell stopped laughing, looked at me closely and said, ‘So you are going to be a Deke, right?’ At that point I wasn’t up in the air anymore!”
Shep proudly continued his family’s legacy and became a Deke. He lived at the house his sophomore year and remembers it being an especially fun time. Part of the reason may have been because there weren’t a lot of brothers in the house that year. “Each of us was able to have a single room. I lived down in the endzone (the area above the kitchen) with Chris Harris ’95, Craig Comer ’95, Greer Vanderberry ’95, and Wells Brabham ’95,” recalls Shep.
After graduation, Shep lived in Raleigh and Durham for nine years while working as a journalist in the Triangle. He mostly wrote about the business and compliance side of the healthcare industry. Somewhat recently, though, he “burned out” on it and made plans to volunteer in South Africa for a few months, beginning in May 2007. However, those few months have turned into more than a year and he is still in Cape Town today with no plans to leave.
“I really fell in love with Cape Town,” says Shep. “It’s an amazing, cosmopolitan city surrounded by two oceans with a mountain right in middle of it. There are hiking trails and beaches everywhere, as well as great restaurants and nightlife. But, right next to all this great fun and wealth is some of the most abject poverty in the world. By most measures, South Africa has the highest violent crime rates in the world; and the townships of the Cape Flats outside of Cape Town are some of the worst in the nation.
“I volunteered with the South African Education and Environment Project (SAEP) when I first came to Cape Town, and I am now a staff member. SAEP was founded by Norton Tennille, a UNC alumnus from my hometown of Winston-Salem. Our goal is to educate children and young adults in the Cape Flats. We have programs ranging from early childhood development, where we help to fund, build and manage new preschools (called crèches in South Africa); to high school programs where we send volunteer academic tutors into the schools, and have programs for the arts, debating, environmental education, etc. You would think that high school students in one of the most violent, poverty-stricken places around would be a lot of trouble. They really aren’t. They are so eager to better themselves that they will absorb all the lessons you can provide.
“One of our most innovative programs is our Gap Year Program. Even the best students from township high schools will probably have some deficiencies in their education. They simply aren’t offered all the subjects they need to get into universities or any tertiary education. With our Gap Year program, we take 12-15 of the top students from the high schools where we work. We get the kids out of the townships and bring them to an office in the suburbs. There, we provide them with intensive academic tutoring as well as training for computers, job-seeking, etc. In exchange for this, we ask the Gap Year interns to participate in our various community service projects,” he concludes.
Shep works primarily in fundraising and development, but most days he gets out to the high schools to teach English. You can check out SAEP’s work by visiting their website, www.saep.org. He credits DKE with providing him a place to learn about philanthropy. Though he’s sure most pledges do not join the Dekes in order to make the world a better place, they end up helping in so many ways. Shep goes on to state: “The more people I meet from the DKE house, the more impressed I have become with how much this community has given back. Many extremely successful people have come from that house, and it’s really great to see how much they care about the fraternity, the university and their own communities.”
Doing good works through SAEP is important enough to Shep that he has decided to stay in Cape Town by turning short-term volunteerism into his long-term career. He enjoys living in South Africa and does a lot of hiking and swimming in his spare time. Also, he has found other Carolina graduates in Cape Town and has been working with UNC to design a “Carolina in Cape Town” project that will bring money and students to the area for SAEP projects. Shep will be returning to UNC for the Oct. 11th Notre Dame game and to be in Greer’s upcoming wedding. He hopes to see many of his fellow Dekes while there.
